Ramallah, West Bank
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat demanded this week that Osama bin Laden stop saying he’s fighting for the Palestinians. “Why is bin Laden talking about Palestine now?” Arafat said in an interview with the London Sunday Times. “He never helped us. He was working in another, completely different area and against our interests.” Al Qaida has only recently begun to cite Palestinian “liberation” as a motivating factor in its terrorist attacks. For years its official statements railed against Christians and Jews in general and U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia in particular. In taking responsibility for last month’s bombing of a Kenyan hotel, though, al Qaida said, “Liberation of our holy places, led by Palestine, is our central issue.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Book reviews: ‘Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America’ and ‘How to End a Story: Collected Diaries, 1978–1998’Feature A political ‘witch hunt’ and Helen Garner’s journal entries
-
The backlash against ChatGPT's Studio Ghibli filterThe Explainer The studio's charming style has become part of a nebulous social media trend
-
Why are student loan borrowers falling behind on payments?Today's Big Question Delinquencies surge as the Trump administration upends the program
